Brian Butch Quotations

We're so uptight half the darn time. And you can't blame us. We're playing at a level where we had three big games against three great teams and we needed to play hard. We played hard; we didn't make shots. The shots will come. We can't stress here and think we're not going to make any more shots for the rest of our lives.

Hopefully we'll be busy playing a lot of basketball.

You have to find it somewhere. We need to. Either me or him, for us to be successful, we have to get production out of us. Today we didn't get anything.

I think he started it out as a joke and then realized that a lot of people were interested in it. It's one of those things where he's got the ability to do it, and he's a creative guy like that.

We were moving the ball a little more. It wasn't too much standing in the post. It was movement that created open shots. Everyone was creating off of each other. That's how good stuff happens.

We're not where we are at without him. That's the honest truth. Ohio State has a bunch of guys around Dials who are seniors. We have one senior.

We didn't do a good enough job of getting our bodies into it. We just have to try to get bodies on bodies a little bit more and be more explosive.

We've got to find it. I didn't play well today. I'm not going to lie about it. Anybody who watched the game today is going to say the same thing.

We've played in tough places the last three games. That just gets us ready.

We've had the ability to go through some tough times. Through those tough times we've learned. You look at the North Dakota State game and those are tough times. ... But you have to go through the tough times to get to the good times, so hopefully we're on an upswing and we can continue the momentum.

We moved the ball and played well. My own game feeds off of teammates.

There's no way we should lose by 20 in an NCAA tournament game. No way. The front of our jersey says Wisconsin and we let everybody down. We put effort in out there but you just can't lose by 20.

The team played great. Everyone stepped up, everyone hit big shots, everyone made defensive plays. It was just a great, great team win.

That's why I thought the Penn State win for us was so good because it got us our first road win where we know we can do it now. Hopefully we can carry that win through and carry the momentum we have and keep on moving forward here.

This is why this team is good. We do protect each other. A good example was the Ohio State game. You had one guy fronting (Terence) Dials and another guy coming weak-side on him and we made a couple of big plays that way. You had someone there to help you out.

It's exciting. This is why you're a college basketball player, to be in this kind of environment and to be in this situation. You have to go out there and you have to play hard. We know we have a long road ahead of us but being in this situation is a good thing.

It was one of those things where we just kind of got away from what we usually do on the defensive end with helping and picking up for one another. It was one of those things where we had to have a gut-check there and see what we were really made of and I think we all did a pretty good job of getting back on the road again.

It's all a correlation. We know when there's an opportunity. We know that they aren't hitting shots, that they are struggling. So we're getting our best looks, we're just not converting.

It's one of those things where you keep playing with it and keep going to work on it. You just go out there and play. We needed a big road win.

It's hilarious to hear some of the things he says.

It shouldn't have been that hard. We practiced four days (against) it. We've seen it. We played them once before with it. It was a lack of execution.

It's not a question of if we're ready for it, we have to be ready for it. But I think we are. I think we've done everything (we had to do) up to this point. We're playing together as a team and every game we're getting better.

Nothing was easy. We kept on working hard and fighting for position.

You can't go in planning for one thing because they're going to do a bunch of different things. So you have to be ready to be focused. It helps that we've had this many days to prepare for them because we can take a look at everything that they do.